


Spaceman's Luck

by scioscribe



Category: Tom Corbett: Space Cadet Series - Carey Rockwell
Genre: Feelings Realization, Hurt Roger Manning, Hurt/Comfort, In Space No One Can Hear You Pining for Your Best Friends, M/M, Poisoning, Space Flight, very bad science
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-25
Updated: 2020-12-25
Packaged: 2021-03-10 16:26:59
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,307
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28040121
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/scioscribe/pseuds/scioscribe
Summary: They've been through a crisis, but thePolarisshould still hold together long enough to get them home, if everything goes right.Everything does not go right.
Relationships: Astro & Tom Corbett & Roger Manning, Astro/Tom Corbett/Roger Manning
Comments: 2
Kudos: 18
Collections: Yuletide 2020





	Spaceman's Luck

**Author's Note:**

  * For [lady_ragnell](https://archiveofourown.org/users/lady_ragnell/gifts).



“Control deck to power deck. How are we looking, Astro?”

When Astro answered, he sounded almost out of breath, and it took a lot to wear out a Venusian. “Power deck to control deck. I just about got down to holding everything together with twine, but we’re no longer venting fuel and the dials are holding steady. I don’t mind telling you I’ve gotten quite a workout running around down here!”

“I can guess,” Tom said, thinking of all I’d seen Astro go through without even breaking a sweat.

There was a sudden prickle of cold sweat at the nape of his neck as he realized they’d probably been in even more trouble than he’d thought. How slim had their chances gotten before Astro had pulled their fat out of the fire? –Well, that was something he could think about when they were safely home again and debriefing with Captain Strong. Right now, he had to look after the rest of his team.

He exhaled into the microphone—probably noisily, but it couldn’t have been too bad if Roger didn’t say anything about it.

“You’re the man of the hour,” Tom said. “If you want to take a break—”

“No, I think I’ll just sit back for a minute and make sure she’s holding together.” He added, almost sheepishly, “Sure wouldn’t mind a cup of tea, though.”

Tom grinned. “And maybe a sandwich or three?”

“If we’ve got them…”

“I’ll be right down to you, power deck.”

It felt strange to desert the control deck so soon after a crisis, but the truth was, Tom had been the least useful person in the whole affair. His moment of glory had come earlier, when they’d had to face down an armed-to-the-teeth convoy of pirates—these ones less interested in the clever trick of picking every lock in the solar system and more interested in what Captain Strong had grimly referred to as smash-and-grab work. They took no prisoners and left no survivors, and they hadn’t liked the notion of surrendering to the Solar Guard. They’d liked it even less when it had turned out the _Polaris_ was crewed by what they called three overgrown schoolboys. (“Astro’s the only one of us who’s overgrown,” Roger had said, right on cue.) A dogfight for the ages had ensued.

Keeping the three of them alive—without letting the pirates escape—had been Tom’s part of the show, and that had ended over an hour ago.

The pirates were all set to stand trial on Titan. All the _Polaris_ had left to do was limp home.

But even though Titan had been grateful, they hadn’t had many spare parts to turn over, and blast off had been harder on the ship than even Astro had suspected. Getting safely back to Earth—or, in a pinch, Mars—would take a tricky combination of Astro’s engineering expertise and all the astrogation shortcuts Roger could muster. It had already gotten hairy, and if their luck didn’t hold out, Astro’s lick-and-a-promises fixes wouldn’t either.

They _would_ hold this ship together. Tom wouldn’t accept anything less, and he knew Roger and Astro wouldn’t either.

They just had to do everything right over the next few days, that was all. It was a tall order, but they’d come through before. And, Tom thought, it would be easier if they didn’t have to work on empty stomachs.

He made the best, thickest sandwiches he could—roast beef for Roger and roast beef and tyranno ham for Astro—and then loaded them onto the galley cart alongside the teapot. He bet people wouldn’t believe how much time the average space cadet spent playing waiter; thinking about it made Tom grin. It wasn’t glamorous enough to draw anyone into the Solar Guard, that was for sure, but he’d come from a home that knew the value of keeping everybody fed and happy.

He wheeled the cart down to the power deck first, letting Astro marvel at the sandwich that was almost too big even for him.

“That’s what you always say,” Tom said, “right before you start demolishing it.”

“I’m going to demolish this one, I’ll tell you that much.” He picked it up and then hesitated.

Tom had rarely seen him look so uncertain—maybe not even since his manuals. “What is it?” Without even realizing it, he fell into the slightly clipped cadences of command: an odd posture for a boy in the middle of pouring a cup of tea.

“You know I can sweet-talk our engines into almost anything,” Astro said, “but with the damage we took—we’re asking a lot out of them, Tom. We don’t have much room for mistakes.”

“I was just thinking that myself.”

Astro’s smile was warm and slightly crooked, one of Tom’s favorite things about him. “Spaceman’s luck.”

“Spaceman’s luck,” Tom agreed, with a fervency that made Astro laugh. He tugged at the cart. “I’ll take this to Roger now.”

Astro’s brow furrowed. “He’s still up?”

Tom checked his watch. They’d all been up for almost twenty hours straight at this point, and they’d have to sleep in shifts so someone was always around to keep anything from going haywire. If Roger wanted to take first crack at his bunk, that was fine with Tom, but no one had said anything to him about it. “He’s supposed to be. Why?”

Astro shrugged. “I haven’t heard any of his rocket wash over the intercom since things calmed down. Thought I was just too busy stopping explosions to notice him signing off!”

They wouldn’t have worked as such a tight-knit crew if they’d always needed to say what they were thinking. Instead, they spent a lot of time—Roger and Astro especially, and especially with each other—saying what they _didn’t_ mean, ribbing each other just for the fun of it. Right now, neither Tom nor Astro said the word _worried_ , but when their eyes met, Tom had no trouble seeing that they were on the same page. Tom felt suddenly tight with worry, every muscle tensed all at once.

Roger had come out of the firefight just fine. Tom had certainly talked to him after that. But Astro was right—it wasn’t like Roger to sit out so many chances to make to make dumb cracks to them both.

Tom nodded— _I’ll check on him_ —and took off again with the cart, moving a little faster this time.

But everything on radar deck looked normal, at least at first glance. Roger was upright and working, his fingers clenched tight around a stylus; he wrote with one hand and skimmed through astrogation tables with the other.

He looked _almost_ fine. But there was something off about him, even if Tom couldn’t put his finger on it.

“Roger? I brought you a sandwich.”

Roger’s head jerked up, as if he hadn’t noticed that Tom was standing there. There was a faint sheen of sweat on his forehead, and his coloring looked a little off. “Tom?”

Tom left the cart where it was and made it to Roger in three big steps, trying to get a closer look at him. “You sound funny. Is something wrong with our course calculations?”

“Only that we need so many of them,” Roger said. It was a relief to hear him sound closer to testy than distressed. He rubbed at his forehead, squinting down at his tablet like he was having trouble reading his own handwriting. “Making it back to Earth is going to take some fancy footwork either way, but our most direct course would take us straight through an asteroid belt. If we try to go around, it’s more wear-and-tear on the _Polaris_.”

“We’ll trust you over all the speed bumps,” Tom said.

One corner of Roger’s mouth twitched, but that was all. He didn’t even rag Tom about giving him a compliment.

Tom felt his smile fade. “Are you tired?” he tried. “You can have first go at your bunk, if you need it.” He set the sandwich and tea down at Roger’s work station and watched as Roger turned away from it, his nose wrinkling up. He went back to his charts, carefully moving the stylus tip along a row of numbers as if they’d squirm out of place if he didn’t keep them pinned down.

“You’re not hungry?”

“I’m not Astro,” Roger said waspishly. “I don’t need to scarf down a whole buffet just because we missed lunch. Go give it to him. If you went to him first, I’m surprised he didn’t _take_ it.”

“Drink some tea, anyway.” He was starting to feel like his mother.

Roger sighed and pulled the cup towards himself, but when he tried to raise it to his lips, he did it with an odd sloppiness, spilling some of it on his work station. He swore softly, mopping at it with his sleeve before the spreading puddle could touch his tablet, and then Tom heard him hiss between his teeth. He held his arm up like it was bruised, tugging his now wet sleeve away from his skin.

“It shouldn’t be that hot,” Tom said, confused. “Let me see?”

“It’s just irritated, I think,” Roger said, but he actually did stretch out his arm to let Tom have a look. “Everything’s itchy.”

Tom peeled his sleeve up, a movement which earned another stifled sound of pain. There was no sign of any rash.

Without quite knowing why, he ran one finger along where the spill had been, touching lightly enough that all he could really feel was the brush of the little sandy-colored hairs along Roger’s forearm.

Roger tensed up, and Tom let go immediately, wondering why he’d thought that was a good idea in the first place.

“Did that hurt too?”

“No. I mean,” he added hastily, “not much. I’m just sore. All over.”

Probably coming down with something. They all got pricked like pincushions every six months, vaccinated for everything the Solar Guard could think of, but there was never a way to prevent everything. But Tom couldn’t think of anything that would come on this quickly and this strangely—Roger had been perfectly fine a few hours ago, and now he was anything but. It wasn’t just the lack of appetite and the the all-too-sensitive skin, either. He seemed lethargic and uncoordinated, and—

Something in Tom froze.

“Roger,” he said carefully, “did anything get damaged down here?”

“Not much. A couple blown fuses and burst pipes. You don’t have to get Astro up here to look at it, though—the big lug’s probably run off his feet.” He picked the teacup up with both hands this time, drinking what was left of the now-lukewarm tea in long, slow swallows. “I found some spare connectors and patched things up. It’s all chugging along now.”

He’d still want Astro to take a look at it eventually, but that wasn’t what he was worried about right now. “But did anything cut you?”

“I got a couple of scratches when something blew,” Roger said. “We were all running around, you know that, so it’s hard to say where or what from. Why?”

Tom swallowed. “Nyaxoline.”

It was an anti-corrosive chemical sealant that was used in every high-grade ship’s fuel lines—nyaxoline let them use more volatile fuel mixtures that gave them the kind of speed that would have been impossible a few decades ago.

It was also highly toxic if you got it in your blood. That was never supposed to be a problem, though: the Solar Guard took every possible precaution. Lines treated with nyaxoline were always bright red, so anyone handling them knew what they were dealing with.

“One of the red lines was damaged,” Roger said slowly, “but I wore gloves when I tied it off.”

“But if it blew—” Nyaxoline-treated tubing was brittle, almost like glass. It wasn’t impossible to get red line shrapnel.

Roger had all the early symptoms of nyaxoline poisoning. And there was no easy shipboard cure for it, either. The treatment was—Tom groped through his memories—some kind of blood-scrubbing process that had to be done in a real hospital. It would be days before they could get to one, even on Mars, and late-stage nyaxoline poisoning—which set in all too quickly—meant delusions, further disorientation, and even more skin sensitivity.

Roger looked at him. His eyes had a tell-tale bright sheen to them that Tom should have clocked right away, but they were still lucid enough. “You really think I’ve got it, Tom?”

“Yes.” He hated saying it, but lying would have been worse for all of them. He wished he could have touched Roger, but he didn’t know how to do it right now without hurting him. “You'd better go on and go to bed."

Roger surprised him by picking up his stylus again and seemingly forcing his fingers to clutch it tightly via sheer force of will. It was a streak of stubbornness that took Tom back to their earliest days at the Academy, when Roger had held on tooth-and-nail to the idea that he wasn’t going to belong in the Solar Guard, no way and no how. Tom had almost forgotten about that streak of steely contrariness, and now there was no way around contending with it. Roger just went on scrawling numbers. It looked like he was even double-checking the ones he’d already done.

Tom didn’t resort to command privileges much with his friends—he didn’t usually have to—but he invoked them now. “It’s an order, Roger.”

He’d expected Roger’s immediate—probably truculent—cooperation, but he didn’t get it.

“I need to finish these,” Roger said. His mouth was a hard line, his lips almost white where they were pressed together. “If you’re right, I won’t be able to do them later.”

He couldn’t argue with that, however much he wanted to. He and Astro could play astrogator if they had to, but they weren’t half as good at it as Roger; when it came to tricky courses like the one they were plotting right now, that half mattered a lot.

Instead, he just said, “Mars, not Earth.”

Roger hitched up his chin in silent assent.

It wasn’t fair, Tom thought childishly: it wasn’t right for Roger to get hurt by something so ridiculous, something that hadn’t even presented itself fairly for them to fight against. He went to Roger’s microphone and called down to Astro.

“Radar deck to power deck.”

“Is that you, Tom?” There was a hard-to-read pitch to Astro’s voice. Hard-to-read to most people, anyway: Tom understood it at once and knew he would have sounded the same way. He wanted to know why Tom was the one calling from Roger’s post.

“It’s me.” He lifted his thumb off the call switch for a second, trying to think how to handle it. He didn’t think Astro would appreciate him trying to tap-dance around it, and probably Roger wouldn’t either. “Roger got hit when a red line blew. He’s got nyaxoline poisoning. We’re pretty sure, anyway.”

There was a too-long silence at the other end of the radio, and then Astro said, “I’ll be right up.”

Roger looked up, scowling in a Roger-ish way that meant he wasn’t actually unhappy. “What’s he think he’s going to do about it? He should be down there making sure we don’t burst at the seams.”

“Astro wouldn’t leave the engines if they needed him. Even for us.” He wasn’t completely sure that that was true, but it was true enough.

Astro barreled in a moment later, rushing over to them. He stopped short, his boots squeaking against the floor, his shoulders canting forward as his own momentum threatened to keep carrying him on. He’d just remembered the skin sensitivity; Tom could see it in his eyes. He knew that it was already impossible to touch Roger without hurting him—and it would get more impossible by the hour. That cut off more for Roger and Astro than it would for most people. The two of them always playfully sniped at each other, but they touched a lot, too—bear hugs, teasing cuffs, Roger’s hand on Astro’s arm, Astro’s arm around Roger’s shoulder. If they were on leave and bending the rules enough to have a few drinks, Roger and Astro clambered over each other like puppies. It was like a shortcut straight through the maze of all their jibes about each other.

Tom had always liked seeing them like that, loose-limbed and easy with each other. Drunkenness held such hopefulness and risk that it was probably a good thing they didn’t get more of it.

Now, he saw that Astro didn’t know what to do.

“Leave it to you to get cut up by a blown red line,” Astro said finally. His smile didn’t reach his eyes. “What are you doing?”

“Charting our course to Mars while I still can.”

“Tom and I can do that.”

“Through an asteroid belt?” Roger answered his own question: “You both probably could, if we had enough fuel and all our buffers working, but you know we don’t.” He scribbled a few more notations. The way he looked at them, like he was struggling to decipher some kind of hieroglyphic, made Tom suspect that the confusion was already starting to kick in. His heart knocked against the inside of his chest, panicky and wild. He didn’t like situations he couldn’t do anything about.

Command was supposed to mean something. And a few hours ago, it had—it had helped save their lives. But now, all he could do was watch.

“You should check these,” Roger said, passing his tablet over. “I’m—fuzzy.”

“We’ll check. You need to get to bed.”

“Sleep won’t help.”

“It won’t hurt either,” Astro said. “And it’s time you don’t have to spend climbing the walls. One of the best painkillers we’ve got, too. You ought to strip down.”

Tom raised his eyebrows. “I thought Roger was supposed to be our Casanova.”

“It won’t rub you so much.” Astro tugged at the neckline of his uniform shirt, like he was demonstrating. “Your skin hurts, right?”

“My uniform’s probably still softer than our sheets,” Roger said—which might have been true. The Solar Guard tried to take good care of them, but they didn’t shell out for butter-soft Venusian cotton. “And I don’t want to go around naked just because you two want a thrill.”

“Some thrill!” Astro said. “With you looking dead on your feet, so shaky you probably can’t stand up straight and so sore you’d holler if we touched you.”

Roger tilted his head. The smile on his face was weak but real. “Why, Cadet Astro, that almost sounds like flirting. If the only thing stopping you from falling into my arms is a little nyaxoline—”

“If Astro fell into your arms, he’d squash you,” Tom said.

Astro said, “And I know you too well to ever flirt with you anyway, Manning.”

“Funny.” Roger’s expression looked stiff all of a sudden. “Well, I should have known you wouldn’t have good taste. Okay, boys, I guess I’ll hit the hay.” He stood up and immediately swayed, catching himself against his workstation. “I’ve got it. I’m fine. I’ll just—stay close to one of the walls.”

Tom and Astro followed him along anyway, ready to catch him if he slipped again. It was taking a lot out of him to move even this far, Tom could tell—his face had gotten even grayer beneath its sheen of sweat. Maybe it would be better for Astro to carry him after all—maybe a little pain would be worse than this awful slog—

But that was Roger’s choice, Tom reminded himself firmly, and Roger had clearly made it. He even reached his bunk, but he braced himself against it for a moment before he lowered himself down. With his forehead almost resting against the smooth wall, he said, “You know what to tell my mother, don’t you, Tom?”

“I’m not going to have to tell your mother anything,” Tom said firmly. He was clenching his jaw a little too tightly and had to work to unstick it long enough to talk. “Every time you get a cold, you ask us to tell your mother something.”

“You’re only half-right, as usual. Sometimes I get a cold at home and I ask my mother to tell _you two_ things.”

“We don’t want to hear any of that either,” Astro said. “Get into bed, hotshot.”

Roger lowered himself in, and a small noise escaped him as he hit the mattress. He screwed his eyes shut, and when he opened them again, his eyelashes were damp and dark.

“We’ll get you home,” Tom said. “We’ve got your calculations. Just try to sleep.”

***

Roger did sleep for a couple of fitful hours. Tom tried stationing himself by his bedside as a kind of poorly trained nurse, but there was only so much of it he could take: Roger had kept twisting and turning, kicking at the sheets, and it was hard to watch him root around for a comfortable position he wasn’t going to find. Everything might as well have been made of burning sandpaper for all the good it was doing Roger. Tom had to give up watching and go talk to Astro instead. The two of them played a listless game of space poker with breath mints for chips. There was going to come a time when one or both of them would have to take the emergency pep pills—it wasn’t safe to leave the ship completely unattended, and even a one-man watch wasn’t much—but for now, their exhaustion wasn’t enough to overcome their worry.

“It shouldn’t be there in the first place,” Tom said. “It’s not worth the risk.”

Astro didn’t have to ask him what he was talking about. He ate one of their poker chips, crunching it between his teeth. “That fuel boost saved our skin a few hours ago. We couldn’t have outmaneuvered the pirates without it.”

Blast it. He’d wanted something to blame, something closer at hand than the pirates. He showed his cards.

The hand went to Astro. Again.

“I need to stop playing this with you,” Tom grumbled, trying to pretend like either of them cared much about winning or losing right now.

“It was one of the ways I scraped up money on Venusport,” Astro said.

“It makes it a little better to know I never really had a chance. At least—Roger!” He bolted to his feet.

Roger stood in the doorway, swaying a little even with his hand planted against the wall. He’d taken Astro’s advice and shucked off his uniform shirt somewhere.

“How are you feeling?” Astro said.

“Funny.” Roger wetted his lips. “Sore.”

“Is it easier, with your shirt off?” Astro sounded like he was talking to some kind of spooked animal; Tom wondered how hard he had to try to sound that calm and patient when his hands were white-knuckled on the edge of the table, like clutching it hard enough would let him keep everything under control.

Roger didn’t answer. The disorientation was probably already setting in. But he’d still made his way to them, and that had to mean something, didn’t it? Even with the works in his head all gummed up, Roger still knew the _Polaris_ like the back of his hand.

“Why don’t you sit down?” Tom said, pushing out a chair. “You can watch Astro take me for all I’ve got.”

“All the breath mints he’s got,” Astro said. “This is where you’re supposed to say I’m the one who needs them more anyway.”

“That,” Roger said weakly. He took a couple wobbly steps towards them.

There was no easy way to follow the wall around to where they were sitting, Tom realized, so Roger was having to walk unsupported. He hopped out of his chair and was at Roger’s side in a second, offering his arm for Roger to hold onto. That seemed like it would hurt less than Tom just grabbing him. Roger turned his head a little and smiled at him: a soft, sweet smile that Tom had only seen on him a couple of times.

“You guys are going to rub this in my face when all this is over,” Roger said.

Tom cleared his throat and managed a kind of grin. “Who says we’re going to wait for it to be over?”

“I saw a baby brontosaurus walk just like that,” Astro said. He held the third chair steady while Roger lowered himself into it, wincing as settled in. “It was awfully cute, but you might be even cuter, Cadet Manning. We could pinch your cheek if it wouldn’t hurt you so much.”

That was exactly the kind of thing Roger should have gotten a secret kick out of it, but now he just looked confused. “What?”

“Nothing,” Astro said, softer now. “Don’t worry about it. Just watch me beat Tom, okay?”

“He’s a card shark,” Roger said to Tom, like he thought Astro couldn’t hear him. “But just at space poker. They don’t play Texas Hold ‘Em on Venus, so you might have him licked if you try that.”

“I don’t play Texas Hold ‘Em either,” Tom said.

“That’s what I get for trying to help.” Roger wound up slumping back in the chair, the pain of having his sore back pressed against the hard plastic surface not as bad, apparently, as the dizziness that came from trying to sit up straight. He let his eyes fall half-closed.

Tom didn’t know how this was supposed to be more comfortable than his bed, but then, as he played through another losing hand, he decided that maybe he did. If it had been him—well, if he’d just had a bad cold, maybe he would have liked the idea of curling up in his bunk and just sleeping it out. Even your friends could rub you the wrong way in times like that. But if he were worried he was dying, he’d want to be with Astro and Roger. No contest. He wouldn’t want to lie there alone in the dark.

“I shouldn’t have left him,” Tom said to Astro, in a whisper in case Roger had fallen back asleep.

Astro shook his head. “In his right mind, Roger would have just made fun of you for camping out there and watching him sleep. It’s all right. Besides,” and he paused here to flick a mint across the table at Tom, “for what it’s worth, I needed you too. I can’t leave the power deck that long, not with things the way they are right now, and it was driving me out of my mind. All the way past Pluto!” he added with a laugh that didn’t really ring true.

Tom reached across the table and bumped his hand against Astro’s. “For someone who wants me around so much, you’re sure not losing any games to keep me here."

Astro grinned. “Because I’ve got such ha high opinion of you, obviously. I know Tom Corbett doesn’t run scared just because he gets all washed up. You’re not a sore loser.”

“Doesn’t mean I like it,” Tom joked.

“I don’t know that the Solar Guard would want you if you did. Command cadets can’t be the kind of people who go around shrugging off defeat.”

“I’m in the sweet spot, then. I won’t get too mean or sulky if I lose, and I’m not so graceful in defeat that it’s no fun for you to win.”

“Now you’ve got it.”

That was how they went on for the rest of the night, playing cards and trying to joke and keeping an eye on Roger and each other. Sometimes one of them had to get up—Astro to secure one of his jury-rigged fixes, Tom to adjust the ship’s heading—and no matter which one of them left, Tom’s dwindling pile of wintergreen poker chips always seemed to replenish itself during the interval, which they both pretended not to notice. The game had to keep going, after all. If they stopped, they’d have to think too much about how many hours were left on their trip. And Tom could use the distraction: his brain already felt like it had decided its sole purpose was to spit out half-remembered facts about nyaxoline poisoning.

He was just glad Roger was sleeping through most of it so far.

“I’ve got an idea,” Astro said, laying down his cards. “Why don’t I go get that folding cot and bring it up here for Roger? We’d have to wake him up to move him into it, but it has to be more comfortable than the chair.”

“I’d think so too. I fell asleep in one of these once and woke up feeling like I’d been in some kind of torture device.”

“I’ll get us the caffeine tablets while I’m up too. I don’t know about you, but I could sure use a pick-me-up right about now.”

Tom nodded. “And how. You go—you’re the only one I’d trust to wrestle a cot all the way here anyway—and I’ll get Roger up and see if he needs anything.”

Then he just had to figure out how to wake Roger up without either hurting him or alarming him. “Roger?”

Nothing.

“Guess I shouldn’t be surprised,” Tom said. He felt a weary smile settle on his face. “Not just because we’ve been talking in your ear half the time and you’ve been sleeping through it, but more because you wouldn’t make it that easy on us, would you? You included.” If he yelled in Roger’s ear, that might be enough to wake him up, but it would also probably startle him, and Tom didn’t even want to think about how much it might hurt if Roger wound up falling out of the chair.

Tom gritted his teeth and did the only thing he could think of. He settled his hand down—very lightly—on the back of Roger’s wrist.

Roger’s eyes flew open, and he let out a harsh cry of pain.

“I’m sorry,” Tom said, letting go as quickly as possible. “I just needed to get you up—Astro’s getting you a cot so you can stay here without having to sleep in that chair. I’m sorry I hurt you.”

He’d been hoping that Roger would be at least as hazily coherent as he had been earlier, but it only took a second for him to see that that wasn’t going to be the case.

Roger’s eyes were wide, white-walled with panic. He surged up out of his seat and saved himself from falling only by, it seemed, sheer force of will. He reached for his paralo-ray gun and clenched his fist at finding he wasn’t wearing it.

“Roger—”

Roger’s voice was low and intense. “Where are Tom and Astro?”

Whatever Tom had been expecting, it wasn’t that. It threw him for a loop. “What?”

“The rest of the crew of the _Polaris_. Tom Corbett and Astro. Where are they?”

He didn’t know what to do except try to reassure Roger as best as he could. “I’m Tom, Roger,” he said softly. “We’re on the _Polaris_. Look around. Look at _me_.”

Roger did, with almost visible reluctance—it was like he thought Tom was going to try to trick him. He glanced around the power deck, his eyes moving as restlessly as if he were following a pinball game. Tom didn’t know how much he was really processing.

“You’re in pain, I know,” Tom said. “You’ve got nyaxoline poisoning, so you’re sore and confused and your balance is off, but we’re getting you a hospital on Mars.”

“You dosed me with nyaxoline?”

“No! No, of course not. A red line blew—the pirates were firing at us, the whole ship’s dinged up—come on, Roger. You know me. You can remember this. It’s me, it’s Tom.”

Roger touched the tip of his tongue to his lips; there was a dry, sticky sound to it. He was probably thirsty, Tom realized—he hadn’t had any of his tea earlier, and they’d forgotten to coax him into drinking some water. Being dehydrated probably wasn’t helping it. It might even be hurting him—maybe more water would have helped flush the nyaxoline out of his system. Why didn’t he know more about this? He was supposed to come out of all this ready to captain a full ship, and he didn’t even know enough to take care of the two crewmates he already had, the two people who meant the most to him. If Roger died…

He wasn’t going to. Tom refused to even think about it.

If his command training was going to be good for anything, it was going to be good for this. He was going to pull Roger out of this.

“You know me,” Tom said soothingly. “You know my whole family. You and Astro ate your way through half of my mother’s pies the last time we had a real leave. _Your_ mother makes the best fudge I’ve ever tasted, and she—she sculpts, she does wood carvings and metalwork, you have one of her pieces in your bedroom at home. It’s nice. You didn’t want to be in the Solar Guard, not at first—you were going to just take your training and get out—but you—” He didn’t know exactly how to phrase Roger’s epiphany. Roger had just come around, that was all: he’d started caring enough for them and for the work that he hadn’t wanted to leave anymore.

Roger’s high alert status seemed to be easing off just a little. “You’re Tom,” he said hoarsely.

Tom nodded.

“Where’s Astro?”

“He’s getting you a bed.”

That seemed past Roger’s ability to process right now; he just blinked hazily at Tom.

“Will you sit back down?” Tom said tentatively. “I didn’t mean for you to get up, really. Not until Astro moved your bed in.”

“Could have just let me keep sleeping, then.” It was good to hear a little bit of a grumble in his voice. That was the one thing that felt like business as usual. Roger didn’t move, though.

Tom tried again. “Do you want to sit down?”

Roger shook his head. His pallor was even worse now. “Hurts. Are we on Venus? The tyranno—”

“No. We’re on our way back to Mars. Got to get you to a hospital.”

“Mars.” Roger leaned forward more, barely holding himself up. “I was so thirsty. Passed out, Astro had to carry me.”

“He had to carry us both, back then, before it was all over.”

“I let you down,” Roger said. His eyes were almost closed.

“That’s the dumbest thing I’ve ever heard you say,” Tom said firmly. “And there’s a lot of competition for that, believe me. If you weren’t so off your feed, I’d laugh at you. You’ve always come through for us—we’ve all always come through for each other.”

There was a sudden burst of static, and then Astro’s voice, too loud to sound right, filled up the room. “Control deck to power deck—come in, Tom.”

Roger bolted away from the sound and fell, landing hard and twisting up with pain.

Of course everything had to go wrong at once. Tom couldn’t leave him lying like that, no matter what, so he helped lever him up—it killed him to know that even that was painful for Roger—and then got him back into his chair. Roger’s hair was soaked through with sweat; his skin was gleaming with it. It had darkened his eyelashes, making him blink uncontrollably, so as carefully and gently as he could, Tom wiped his brow clear.

“Check on Astro,” Roger said, when it seemed like he could breathe again. “Anything that’s got him sounding worried is enough to get _me_ worried.”

Tom agreed. He made it to the intercom: “Power deck to control deck. What’s going on, Astro?”

“We’ve got a flotilla,” Astro said grimly. “A whole blasting fleet of pleasure cruisers that we’ll be in the middle of in fifteen minutes. I had to wrestle the bed out of storage up here or I wouldn’t even have seen them coming.”

“But I put in—” He bit back the rest of that. Yes, he’d put in the coordinates and calculations Roger had given them and programmed their course home, and yes, that should have been enough to keep anyone out of their way; if the cruise ships had done the same, they wouldn’t be poised for a collision. But obviously they hadn’t. Tom could get mad about it later; right now, they didn’t have time, and there wasn’t any point. “I’ll be up in a second.” He took his thumb off the switch. “Roger, I need to leave you for a minute.”

He didn’t know how much of it Roger would really understand, as out of it as he was, but hopefully he would at least stay calm enough to not mind being left alone.

The last thing he expected was for Roger to say, “You should take me up with you.”

“What?”

“You need me.”

“Astro and I can figure out the course changes on our own.”

“Sure. The hard part’s not getting us out of their way—pick just about any direction and rocket off. But you’ll need to steer us back home again after that, and for that, you need me.”

“You’re the best astrogator there is,” Tom said, something he never would have said if he thought there was a chance of Roger remembering it and holding it over all their heads, “but Astro and I can hold our own, and you’re not up for the work right now. Stay here. That’s an order.”

He didn’t give Roger a chance to argue with him, he just sprinted off for the control deck. They could steer from there and even make a couple of calculations—they’d have to go back down to the radar deck to access the astrogation charts—

This was going to cost them time and fuel, and they didn’t have much of either.

He saw that the same realization had hit Astro hard too. One look at him was enough to see the cold, barely contained anger; if the director of that bunch of cruise ships had been right there in front of them, he’d have probably had his teeth knocked out.

“Did you steer us away already?”

Astro shook his head. “I waited for you. I thought you might have the better idea of how to do it. You know this stuff’s not my strong suit.”

When it came to getting them out of the flotilla’s way, it was mostly down to guesswork. Tom flipped through as many navigation screens as he dared take the time to look at and then made his decision, veering off hard.

Radar deck had more sophisticated screens, but what Tom had was at least enough for him to see when they’d cleared the path of the flotilla. Whatever happened, at least they wouldn’t have a head-on collision. But now they were stuck with an even trickier route to Mars. All Roger’s calculations were more or less null and void now, unless they just happened to get back to exactly the same spot they’d left. They’d have to take new fixes and adjust their headings. And as much as Tom hated to admit it, they were rusty at that. They’d crammed for their manuals, and his head had been full of astrogation then—engine repair too—but now they’d had too much time to get used to their specialties.

Roger’s voice crackled over the intercom. “Try this,” he said with no ceremony or protocol. “I’ll shoot some coordinates up to you.”

Tom looked at the indicator lights. Roger was radioing them from the radar deck. “I told you to stay down on the power deck!”

“I’m delirious,” Roger said. “I’m not responsible for my actions.”

“But we’re supposed to trust your math?”

“Don’t you?”

Yes. Tom did, actually. But he trusted Roger and Astro more than the Solar Guard had ever expected or even recommended; his feelings on them weren’t always reliable.

“Is he really delirious?” Astro said in a low voice.

“I had to convince him I was really me,” Tom said. “He’s out of it for sure. But he had his priorities straight, even then: he told me to stop bothering with him and answer you, and he wanted to know where you were. He wanted to make sure we were safe.”

“That’s as sane as I need him to be,” Astro said. He met Tom’s eyes. “What about you? Risk it?”

It wouldn’t kill them if they did—not directly, anyway. They’d just lose more fuel and time, and _that_ could kill them.

But if they waited around much longer, Roger’s numbers wouldn’t be good anymore. It didn’t take long to lose your heading, out in space.

“This should get us back to where we were,” Roger said. “I found some calculations, and I think they’ll match up. Somebody wrote a bunch down.”

Tom groaned. “Roger, that was you.”

“Was it? I can’t say I think a whole lot of my handwriting.”

“Can’t say that was too reassuring,” Astro said. “But I think it’s worth trying. Roger’s got a compass in his head, and we don’t.”

“Astro’s right,” Roger said. “—Now I know I’ve got to be delirious.”

“Blast off,” Astro advised him. “Tom, you’ve got to do it or not.”

Tom went with his gut, which didn’t give a damn about nyaxoline poisoning. He made Roger’s course changes, knowing that it would be hours before they would be able to get good enough points of orientation to know for sure that they were headed in the right direction. He would just have to hope. He let out a shaky breath and turned to Astro.

“Let’s get our mutinous astrogator a bed.”

Astro wrestled it down to first the radar deck and then the power deck, because Roger balked at sleeping too far away from where Tom and Astro would be spending most of their time. Tom had never seen him quite like this—still _Roger_ , irritable and self-assured and prone to needling them, but openly tender, too, and almost clingy from it. Astro took it completely in stride and probably would have let Roger cling to him like a limpet if every jostle and brush against them hadn’t made Roger almost bite through his lip with pain. Tom just wanted there to be something more he could do, and no matter how hard he thought about it, there wasn’t.

They got Roger settled down on the cot.

“If you try to lie as still as you can, maybe it won’t be so bad,” Tom said.

Roger made a rude gesture.

“All right, then, thrash around if you want to.”

Roger just closed his eyes. “I don’t want to sleep until I know we’re going the right way.”

“Don’t worry about it,” Astro said cheerfully. “If you gave us bad directions, you can count on me to wake you up and tell you so.”

“I can’t, though,” Roger said. “You dope, you wouldn’t really kick me when I’m down. You’re both too soft-hearted.” 

Tom scoffed, glad to have something be ridiculous. “You should talk.”

“Not soft where it counts.”

Astro laughed. “I bet that’s what you tell all the girls you meet on leave.”

“I don’t do that anymore,” Roger muttered. He still hadn’t opened his eyes; Tom thought they were maybe a minute away from him falling back asleep, thankfully. If they had the kind of spaceman’s luck they wanted—and not the all-too-common kind they’d been _getting_ lately—Roger would sleep all the way to Mars. “Don’t want anybody else.”

He saw Astro freeze in place. He and Tom looked at each other, like they weren’t sure what to do with what had just slipped out.

Then Astro swallowed and squared his shoulders. He reached down and touched his fingertips to Roger’s hair, where he could touch him without hurting him. “Me too,” he said. “I don’t want anybody else either.” He held his hand out to Tom, who took it. Astro was warm and steady, and he had grease worked into his fingers, darkening them. He touched Roger’s hair too, and to his surprise, Roger rolled his head into them until they were really touching him. It must have hurt, but it seemed like he wanted to feel them there.

“Me three,” Tom said. He was surprised by how steady he sounded—he’d done a lot of wanting and hoping and scolding himself, enough that it should have made him more nervous than it had, but when it came down to it, he guessed they were the one thing he was sure of. “So it’s unanimous.”

***

They made it to Mars with two hours of fuel left to spare.

“Roger’s never going to let this go,” Astro said. He and Tom were waiting in the hospital, both of them too tired to pace but too wired to sleep. They’d gotten a bunch of Venusian chocolates out of the vending machines and eaten so many that Tom was starting to feel sick to his stomach. “I say if he doesn’t remember he plotted us back here while in the middle of delirium, we don’t tell him.”

“Agreed.” He looked wearily at another chocolate bar and then started unwrapping it anyway. It was something to do.

They were sitting close together, their shoulders touching. The euphoria that had rocketed through Tom back on the _Polaris_ had had time to get buried underneath all the worry—that they wouldn’t make it to Mars on time, that Roger wouldn’t pull through—but if he started feeling like he’d imagined their talk, he could at least feel Astro’s arm against his, sturdy and real.

Roger’s doctor came out, and they both leapt to their feet.

She held up her still-gloved hands. “I’ve dealt with spacemen before,” she said, with a warm smile. “I know you’re worried about your friend, but he’s going to be fine. We scrubbed his blood, and there’s no trace of the nyaxoline in his system. There wasn’t that much to begin with, thankfully.”

Tom thought about Roger being unable to so much as turn over in bed without half-whimpering from pain, and he decided he never wanted to see what a hefty dose of nyaxoline poisoning looked like.

“There’s not going to be any permanent damage. We’re just replenishing his fluids right now, and he’ll need some bed-rest. He might be a little stiff—people tend to deal with the skin sensitivity by keeping all their muscles tensed up, like they’re trying to curl up on themselves, so he’s probably coming off of that now. He’s asking for you.”

“Can we see him?” Tom said eagerly.

“Of course.” She looked at the heap of candy wrappers around them and added, after a pause, “You can even bring him whatever’s left of the vending machine, if you’d like. I don't think his tray had dessert.”

They sheepishly hauled the rest of the chocolates in to Roger, but Tom thought he saw one more disappear into Astro’s pocket.

Roger had a little color back in his cheeks, which was an immediate relief; he was scarfing down forkfuls of scrambled space eggs, so he had his appetite back, which was better still. It was even enough for Tom and Astro to forgive the fact that the first thing Roger said was, “You two _Earthworms_ let me find our way home? I could have plotted us into the sun.”

“He remembers,” Tom said to Astro.

“Of course, it’s good to know you have that kind of faith in me,” Roger said. “In the heat of our greatest distress—”

“We’ve been in worse spots,” Astro said.

“—you both counted on me.” He took a swig of Martian orange juice, like a concluding flourish.

Tom couldn’t really argue with that. They _had_ counted on him. They always would—they’d always count on each other, especially when they were in a real pinch. It wasn’t about anything they’d learned in the Academy, either. It was mostly about what they’d learned on Mars, the first time they’d all really come together—the first time they’d all been in big trouble and managed to get each other out of it.

With that in mind, with Roger on the mend and Astro right there beside him, Tom felt like this was the real spaceman’s luck: to go through hell, if you had to, but to always come out of it together.

“We all counted on each other,” he said. “Astro held the ship together, or we wouldn’t have made it back.”

“And Tom’s the only reason we lived through the pirates,” Astro said.

Roger smiled. “A crew-wide effort. I won’t deny that.” He turned his head then, looking out the window: he had a canal view, and Tom wondered if Roger was thinking of the same thing he had, of that long, slow crawl across Mars, when they’d all been desperate for water. Roger went on looking, and then he said, “I remember something else, too. I think so, anyway. I might have dreamed it.”

Tom put his hand on Roger’s shoulder, squeezing it. It wasn’t half of what he wanted to do, but it would have to stand in for all of it for now. He was just glad to be able to touch him again. He just stood there holding him a little, leaning against Astro all the while.

“You’ve got a good memory,” he said. “I bet you’re right.”


End file.
